News & events

Travelling the miles for fusion | 12/05/2014

Each year CCFE hosts almost 200 visits, enabling thousands of people to see how we're bringing star power to Earth. Two visits in April showed how far some enthusiasts will go to get their fusion fix.

On 23 April, 36 students and teachers from Auckland Grammar School in New Zealand stopped off at Culham during their science trip to Europe and the Middle East. They squeezed a tour of JET and MAST into a packed itinerary, which also included seeing how the Burj Khalifa skyscraper was built in Dubai and a visit to the Airbus factory in France. The pupils' reactions after seeing the experiments at CCFE included: “I've never seen anything like this before"…"Everything is on such a huge scale”… “The robotics were amazing"…"I learned so much from the presenters, they made it easy to understand really complicated stuff"…"It's swayed me more towards doing engineering".

Meanwhile, organisers of CCFE's Open Evening on 9 April were impressed to discover that one visitor had travelled all the way from Italy just for the event. Brazilian Tiago Pomella Lobo, who is doing an engineering course at a university in Turin, had read about JET and fusion during his studies and described his trip as “fulfilling a dream”.

Tiago told us: “I've been interested in fusion for quite some time – I'm amazed by the whole concept. Firstly, the proximity of such high temperature systems to the cryogenics control. Secondly, I had always enjoyed fluid mechanics and electromagnetism, and when I found out about plasma physics I imagined it to be the most difficult and interesting thing I could ever think of, that merged the two fields. Last, but not least, I'd had nuclear physics and particle physics classes, and it was one of the best courses I ever attended – I loved it from the start."

Tiago hopes to work in fusion research and found the Open Evening an inspiring experience:

“I had been searching for a line of research I'd like to go into; I've always wanted to help develop something to make the world advance, applying myself into physics research and hi-tech engineering work, for I've always loved them both. I moved to Italy to study fusion engineering and this meant I was close enough to come and see JET. The visit was everything I imagined it to be – it has encouraged me even more to pursue a job in fusion.”